Immigration Enforcement

LATEST NEWS

Outside a sterile City Hall fringed by the town’s historical artifacts, McAllen Mayor Jim Darling walks at a brisk pace with his communications director leading five paces ahead of him. His face is marked with worry as it had been for just about every day for the past two months, if not longer. Darling had just come out from a roundtable discussion with Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-TX), and border town mayors, and he looked concerned. Read more >

The sun-bleached bones of a human skeleton lay in disarray: the skull rolled on its crown, an S-curved spinal column about two feet away. Leg bones were in a haphazard pile. There were personal items too - a wallet, pair of walking shoes and a dirt-caked T-shirt. Read more >

Fusion has learned that at least 559 pregnant women were detained in just six Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities since 2012, despite a policy prohibiting such detentions except for in cases of "extraordinary circumstances."Read more >

Some of the immigrant children crossing the border say they are being subjected to abusive and inhumane treatment in U.S. Border Patrol stations in South Texas. This includes frigid holding rooms, sleep deprivation, verbal and psychological abuse, inadequate food and water, denial of medical care, and worse.

Dozens of children have come forward to make complaints against Customs and Border Protection officers. The agency responds that any complaints are the result not of mistreatment, but of its stations being overwhelmed by the surge of minors. Read more >

Something similar is happening at the U.S.-Mexico border and on the Mediterranean. In both places, lifesaving and rights-respecting policies are being blamed for a surge in migrants and asylum seekers.

Italy started a rescue-at-sea operation called Mare Nostrum in response to the drowning of 360 boat migrants in October. In the first six months of this year, 65,000 boat migrants arrived in Italy, an eightfold increase over the same period in 2013. Read more >

A deluge of Central American children pouring into the United States threatens to burst the seams of already overstuffed immigration courts, and President Barack Obama's steps to ease the crisis are likely to make matters worse rather than better for some, U.S. officials and immigration lawyers said.

"We are reaching a point of implosion, if we have not already reached it," said Judge Dana Leigh Marks of San Francisco, who has been deciding immigration cases since 1987 and is president of the National Association of Immigration Judges.Read more >